First Lady Michelle Obama has called on Congress to create a $400 million-a-year program to encourage the establishment of supermarkets in places she calls “food deserts.”

The situation in these “food deserts,” as Mrs. Obama describes it, is quite dire indeed. American children are growing fat because their parents cannot get to a supermarket—to buy fruits and vegetables—without undergoing the hardship of boarding a bus or riding a taxi. As a consequence, food-desert-dwelling children are forced to eat fast food and junk procured at chain restaurants and convenience stores…

The report demonstrates that Mrs. Obama’s depiction of American “food deserts” is fatuous at best. Lower-income Americans live closer to supermarkets than higher-income Americans…

There are 23.5 million people who live in “low income” areas that are more than a mile from the nearest supermarket. But more than half of these people are not low-income, and almost everyone in these areas–93.3 percent—drive their cars to the supermarket. On average, they spend 4.5 minutes more than the typical American traveling to the supermarket.

When you step into the voting booth on November 2, you will make the most important decision of your life. You’ll literally be voting on your future – or, more precisely, whether or not you and your country will have one.

Would you like to live in Cuba, own a business in Venezuela or have the civil liberties of an Iranian? Without a radical reversal of course, those happy fates could be yours.

Think of the watershed elections of our lifetime – Nixon-McGovern (1972), Reagan-Carter (1980), The Contract With America (1994), and Bush-Gore (2000). None even comes close to the importance of what will happen in less than two weeks.

You won’t just be voting for a House member and, in some cases, a Senator. You won’t just be voting on whether Nancy Pelosi (“We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it”) remains Speaker of the House, or whether Harry Reid (town meeting protestors are “evil-mongers”) is still the Senate Majority Leader.

You will be voting on whether Obama will still have a rubber-stamp Congress on January 3, 2011 – where a Democratic majority (liberal pod people) vote robotically for whatever economy-annihilating measures the administration dreams up.

If you want a snapshot of Obama’s vision of America (a Kodak moment from Hell), consider the political mutants who descended on our nation’s capital on October 2 to push his agenda.

Along with the usual assortment of labor hacks, educrats and racial guilt-mongers, One Nation Working Together included the Communist Party USA, the Democratic Socialists of America, the American Muslim Association (People for the Jihad Way), the U.S. Campaign to End the (alleged) Israeli Occupation, and the National Council of La Raza (The Race).

..the President’s team has booked the entire Taj Mahal hotel, including 570 rooms, all banquets and restaurants. Since his security contingent and staff will comprise a huge number, 125 rooms at Taj President have also been booked, apart from 80 to 90 rooms each at the Grand Hyatt and Oberoi hotels. The NCPA, where the President is expected to meet representatives from the business community, has also been entirely booked.

….Obama’s contingent is huge. There are two jumbo jets coming along with Air Force One, which will be flanked by security jets. There will be 30 to 40 secret service agents, who will arrive before him. The President’s convoy has 45 cars, including the Lincoln Continental I* which the President travels.

Since Obama will stay in a hotel that is on the sea-front, elaborate coastal security arrangements have been made by the U.S. Navy in consonance with the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard. There will be U.S. naval ships, along with Indian vessels, patrolling the sea till about 330-km from the shore. This is to negate the possibility of a missile being fired from a distance…..

The President will be accompanied by his chefs, not because he would not like to savor Indian cuisine, but to insure his food is not spiked.

The pathetic inability of Barack Obama to speak without the help of a teleprompter will be showcased to the world’s most populous democracy when the president flees the electoral aftermath and decamps for India after the November electiona. Daily News and Analysis India reports:

A teleprompter will be in use for the first time in the Central Hall of Parliament when US President Barack Obama addresses MPs on November eight.

The pathetic inability of Barack Obama to speak without the help of a teleprompter will be showcased to the world’s most populous democracy when the president flees the electoral aftermath and decamps for India after the November electiona. Daily News and Analysis India reports:

As per the tentative programme being worked out, the address by Obama, who once said that “America has its roots in the India of Mahatma Gandhi”, would not be for more than 20 minutes.

Senator Harry Reid boldly states that he is the savior of the world economy. He is clearly frustrated that voters are not more appreciative of what’s he’s done for them.

Where would the world be without Harry Reid?
That’s The Question the World Needs To Ask, That’s right folks, according to Harry Reid, he alone saved us all from a world wide depression.
What Cave As He Been Living In? Is H. Reid totally Senile?
Please watch the interview and you decide.

Republican congressional
candidate says violent overthrow of government is ‘on the table’

12:00 AM CDT on Friday, October
22, 2010

By MELANIE MASON / The Dallas
Morning News
mmason@dallasnews.com

WASHINGTON – Republican
congressional candidate Stephen Broden stunned his party Thursday, saying
he would not rule out violent overthrow of the government if elections did not
produce a change in leadership.

In a rambling exchange during a TV interview, Broden, a South Dallas
pastor, said a violent uprising “is not the first option,” but it is “on
the table.” That drew a quick denunciation from the head of the Dallas County
GOP, who called the remarks “inappropriate.”

In the interview, Brad
Watson, political reporter for WFAA-TV (Channel 8), asked
Broden about a tea party event last year in Fort
Worth in which he described the nation’s government as
tyrannical.

“We have a constitutional remedy,” Broden said then. “And the Framers say if
that don’t work, revolution.”

Watson asked if his definition of revolution included violent overthrow of
the government. In a prolonged back-and-forth, Broden at first declined to
explicitly address insurrection, saying the first way to deal with a repressive
government is to “alter it or abolish it.”

“If the government is not producing the results or has become destructive to
the ends of our liberties, we have a right to get rid of that government and to
get rid of it by any means necessary,” Broden said, adding the nation was
founded on a violent revolt against Britain’s
King George III.

Watson asked if violence would be in option in 2010, under the current
government.

“The option is on the table. I don’t think that we should remove anything
from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms,” Broden said,
without elaborating. “However, it is not the first option.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel ignited a political firestorm this past weekend when she pronounced[1] German multiculturalism a failure.

Addressing a youth delegation of her Christian Democratic Union Party, Merkel observed that in light of the widespread failure of immigrants, particularly Muslims, to integrate – whether by learning the German language or by adopting German cultural and legal norms – the country could have no illusions about the success of its so-called multikulti policies in assimilating immigrants.

“We kidded ourselves a while, we said: ‘They won’t stay, sometime they will be gone’, but this isn’t reality. And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other… has failed, utterly failed.”

Merkel added that the only solution was for immigrants to learn the language and to integrate into the dominant German culture.

As any mention of the untouchable issue of immigration tends do, Merkel’s comments elicited furious condemnation from the German and Left. The left-wing Tageszeitung dismissed her remarks as populist posturing. The Financial Times Deutschland insisted that such rhetoric “cannot be excused.” Still other critics charged that Merkel was stoking “xenophobia.”

Yet the most notable aspect of Merkel’s remarks is just how unremarkable they were. Indeed, the most compelling criticism of her public renunciation of multiculturalism is that it has come too late in Germany’s immigrant crisis.

That crisis dates back to the 1950s. At the time, vast numbers of foreign guest workers, or Gastarbeiter, were required to make up for the post-war labor shortage. In the years that followed, these migrant laborers were needed to fuel the country’s booming industrial economy.

If many of the contemporary problems of immigration and integration were not anticipated, one reason is that it was assumed these workers would return to their countries of origin. Initially, many did just that. Over time, however, fewer and fewer returned. Temporary guests became permanent ones, with the consequence that Germany is now home to some 16 million foreign workers out of its population of 82 million.

Not all of these foreign workers have failed to integrate into German society. Whether Russian or Chinese[2], many have learned German, found jobs, and become productive members of society even as they’ve retained the traditions and language of their native culture. An important exception, however, is Germany’s Turkish community, which at 2.5 million also happens to be the country’s largest ethnic minority. That community is also at the heart of many of Germany’s social, and increasingly, security problems. When Merkel talks about the utter failure of multiculturalism, this is what she has in mind.

The failure of German Turks to assimilate is a well-documented phenomenon. A 2009 study by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development found that even after 50 years and three generation in the country, Turks remained a people apart. They reside in what Germans have come to call “parallel communities,” a diplomatic term for what are in effect ethnic ghettos shunted off from mainstream German society. This exclusion exacts a heavy toll on new generations, many of whom do not know the native language. Reports of primary school classes where 80 percent of children cannot speak German are testimony to the seriousness of the problem.

Religion would seem to be one of the underlying reasons for the Turks’ persistent outsider status. Turks make up the majority of Germany’s 4 million Muslim residents, and despite the secular reputation of 20th century Turkey, there is abundant evidence that their brand of Islam has been in tension with German culture and society.

That is most evident in the contrasting levels of religious commitment. While Germany has followed the European trend toward secularization, its Turkish immigrants remain fervently religious. A 2006 study by the Essen Center for Turkish Studies found that 83 percent of Muslims of Turkish-origins described themselves as religious or strictly religious. And while German leaders have long toed the politically correct line that Islam is fully compatible with German ways – even the blunt-speaking Merkel has paid repeated lip service to the pluralistic cliché that Islam is a “part of Germany” – Turkish Muslims seem to disagree. Not only do nearly half of German Turks say that Islamic laws are incompatible with German society, but many live that way. Forced marriages and “honor” killings are two of the more prominent examples of Islamic practices clashing with German laws and culture. Even in death, many Muslim immigrants spurn integration. By some estimates[3], as many as 80 percent of Muslims have their bodies sent to their home countries so as to avoid a non-Muslim burial on German soil.

More and more, that clash of civilizations underlies a security concern in Germany. This August, German authorities finally shuttered the city’s Taiba mosque, a nursery of jihadist terror whose alumni included September 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta[4]. Just this week, German federal prosecutors arrested[5] 8 men, including a Turkish national, on charges of supporting al-Qaeda and spreading terrorist propaganda on the internet. Previous crackdowns on German-based jihadist groups have also netted Turkish Islamists. As a result, Germany is now on the international radar as a major base for jihadist terror. When the U.S. recently issued a travel alert for Europe, it specifically cited Islamists originating in Germany.

With the costs of multiculturalism’s failure so plain to see, it’s not surprising that many Germans are anxious about where mass immigration has led them. Merkel’s recent comments are only the latest crack in the politically correct “consensus” surrounding the taboo subject. In August, Thilo Sarrazin, a senior official at Germany’s central bank, published a book about the dangers of Muslim immigration whose theme was summed up in its provocative title: Germany Does Itself In. Sarrazin was forced to resign his position amid press furor, but his book continues to top Germany’s best-seller lists – a good indication of where the public’s sympathies lie. Another measure of the national doubts about the wisdom off immigration comes from a recent study, which found that one-third of Germans feel the country is being “over-run by foreigners,” while nearly 60 percent feel that Muslim religious practices should be “significantly curbed.” Elite opinion remains hostile to open discussion of immigration, especially Muslim immigration, but a growing segment of German popular opinion plainly feels that it represents a legitimate worry.

While this concern is encouraging, mirroring as it does Europe’s broader awakening to the issues of immigration and Islamic extremism, it is not altogether a heartening phenomenon. For one thing, the growing alarm about the problem of Muslim integration coexists with a revived anti-Semitism. The same study that found Germans supporting restrictions on certain Islamic practices also found that 17 percent think Jews “have too much influence.” Another problem is that while it is becoming more acceptable to point out the failures of multiculturalism, no serious solution has been offered. Modest attempts at assimilation, such as language classes, are unlikely to overcome entrenched cultural and religious divides.

That will become an even bigger problem for Germany in the decades ahead. At 1.36 children per woman, Germans have one of the lowest fertility rates not only in Europe but in recorded history. Statistics on Germany’s Turkish community are sparse, but there is a consensus that comparatively they have many more children. If those trends hold, Germany likely will look very different in the not-so-distant future. Acknowledging that multiculturalism has failed may be a necessary first step to coping with the consequences of Islamic immigration. But it will not save Germany from that looming demographic predicament.

Palin has last laugh on PBS host, Kos

Sneering commentators thought they caught tea party leader in history
gaffe

Blogger Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos and PBS host Gwen Ifill could
barely contain themselves when they came across an apparent elementary
historical-knowledge gaffe by tea party favorite Sarah Palin, but it turns out
the left-leaning commentators were the ones with egg on their faces.
Moulitsas – a major power-broker in the Democratic Party’s left-wing base –
dashed off a message to his thousands of followers through the Internet social network Twitter after Palin told tea party
activists in Nevada, “Don’t party like it’s 1773 yet,” reported
the blogger who uses the pen name Cuffy Meigs.Moulitsas
sneered, “She’s so smart.”Ifill wrote:
“Sarah Palin: party like its 1773! Ummm.”
Others mocked Palin with comments such as “uhhh” and “[expletive] happened in
1773?”
Palin presumably knows the U.S. was born in 1776. But what Moulitsas and his
crew didn’t recall was that 1773 was the year of the Boston Tea Party, the
inspiration for the grass roots movement that is threatening to sweep the
Democratic Party from power in Congress next month.